Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [123]
“That necklace was offered to Erzulie Jé Rouge.” Moustique had slipped up silently behind her, near enough she thought she felt his warm breath on her neck.
“So it may have been,” Claudine said. “But it is I who give it to Erzulie Fréda.”
She turned to face him. Moustique was the taller—still a tall and gangly youth, who bent on her a child’s expression of puzzlement.
“Was it Erzulie Jé Rouge who turned the war from our gate?” she asked him.
“It was she who danced in your head that day, Madame,” Moustique said.
“Yes,” said Claudine. “But in the spirit of peace and harmony, I offer the beads to Fréda now.”
She trailed her fingers through the bowl of water, and let a few drops fall on the cairn as she went out. A few steps into the tonnelle, she turned.
“Your mother is here, this morning.”
“Yes,” Moustique said. From his face Claudine could see that this was no news to him. Fontelle must have been here for a day or more, then. The force of Claudine’s possession had done away with her memory of that arrival.
The Lord is with thee. Blessèd art thou among women, and blessèd is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us . . .
At the outer mouth of the tonnelle she stopped. A black bore hole of pain had opened in the spot between her navel and her pubes. She waited, swallowing spasmodically, until it passed, and then stepped out into the light. Dieufait and Etienne were waiting for her there, each chewing a small, round sweet potato in its skin.
“N’alé lekol,” Dieufait said. We are going to school.
“We are,” Claudine said, and led them to the arbor by the church.
Near two dozen children waited for her in that shade, most too small for field work, with a few older ones for whom Claudine had obtained special dispensation, because of their aptitude for learning. She had devised a reading and writing lesson based on the first few verses of the twentieth chapter of John, where Mary Magdalen discovers the stone rolled away and the cave empty where the body of Jesus had lain. She had meant to push her students forward to the moment of joy, but the children’s reading went haltingly and their writing wanted more correction than ever, so that at the end of their time Claudine was left stranded with the Magdalen, weeping over the empty sepulcher, and lost to herself at that moment. When she raised her head, she saw the children looking at her kindly. They felt her pain, though without understanding it; could they know how the one hollow echoed the other?
The noon bell tolled. The children scattered to their houses. Claudine went to the well and filled two large buckets and raised them on a pole across her shoulders. Shuddering a little under the weight, she began to trudge toward the cane fields. From the pole of the sky, the sun weighed down on her like hot iron.
Presently most of the children rejoined her. They were bringing food to their fathers and brothers in the field, and some of them also carried water. Etienne and Dieufait flanked Claudine; each of them caught hold of a bucket handle and took a little of the weight from her load. In the past she had chased them away when they tried to do it, but Moustique had told her that the boys were moved by their own spirits to this action, and that the value of her penance was not diminished by their taking a small share of the burden.
They followed the carter’s path cut through the cane till they came to a place where a wagon stood half loaded with fresh stalks. Claudine served out the water as the men received